Monday, December 8, 2008

Many ways to get to the same places

A colleague's Civil 3D installation was pooched - some of the menu choices were simply not working. Some of these menu choices could have been show-stoppers but thanks to Autodesk's insight, I could show them workarounds until I had time to fix the installation (which happened yesterday).

LABELS

By far, the easiest place to get many labels (not all of them, mind you) is from the General pulldown. When the dialog box comes up, you are given the choice of labeling Notes, Lines and Curves, Alignments, Parcels, Profile view, Section View, Surface and pipe Network. Whew! That's alot of labels found in one place!

The Lines and Curves, Alignments, Parcels, Profile view, Section View, Surface and Pipes can be found in their respective pulldowns.

The holdouts in this are found in the Survey and Grading pulldowns and is the figure labeling. I'm not sure why Autodesk didn't include these in the General section.

TABLES

The Survey,Line/Curve, Parcels, Grading and Alignment pulldowns offer the same table look and feel. You can enter in the same data - its just a matter of picking what type you want.

The Points, Surface, Sections and Pipes Tables are unique. I'm not sure why the General pulldown does not have a place for tables like it does for Labels - another wishlist item.

FEATURE LINES

These are placed in many of the pulldowns. These are broken down in many places to the task you want to do; elevations or geometry.

In the Survey pulldown, they are shown as Edit Figure Elevations and Edit figure Geometry.
In the Parcels pulldown, they are shown as Edit Parcel and Edit Parcel Elevations.
In the Grading pulldown, they are shown as Edit Feature Line Elevations and Edit Feature Line Geometry.

And of course, don't forget about the all-inclusive Feature line icons.

Simplified locations even made easier!

Monday, December 1, 2008

For your REFERENCE

How many times has this happened to you?

1. A project was started in Land Desktop and contains xrefs.
2. The project name was changed mid-stream.
3. You now have the task of opening every drawing and changing all xrefs to the new path.
4. Repeat this for the 46 drawings.
5. Swear, cuss, scream..

Well Reference Manager to the rescue! An obscure program that resides in the Autodesk folder under the Start/All Programs.

This little gem has saved my butt countless times. You enter in the drawing(s), and let the program whirr a bit while it loads all of them (I would recommend doing one or two to begin with so you get the feel for what this program does).



The actual magic begins when you select a file. Or more specifically select the xref tab on the left and then click in the xref drawing name. You are given the choice of Editing Selected Paths or Find and Replace. In this scenario, I chose to edit the selected path since the project name and number has changed.





All drawings that use this xref will be updated to the new location. so you might be thinking what does this have to do with Civil 3D? Well, the entire hard disk xref locations are hard-coded into Civil3D also. So the same applies there too. Play with it and see if it simplifies your life and blood pressure.

I'm going through AU withdraw symptoms now as they are just starting up as I type. I have had the privilege the last couple years of attending Autodesk University. this year but with the economy the way it is - the powers that be said that I could not go. Yes the big hoopla and parties are nice, but what I really miss is the interaction with fellow Civil3d-ites and the plethora of learning and knowledge that is available there. So, hopefully next year will be a different story.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Speech Recognition - yeah right!

I was showing some of the engineers and designers the built-in capability that Vista has with speech recognition. It does work pretty slick.
One of the designers asked why can't we have that in Civil3D?

I thought about it for a bit and started laughing out loud - I explained that it is easier typing in the command than saying some of them! :)

For example:
Convertlineworktomaskblock
AeccAddLinkAtStation
BAuthorPalletteClose

I just thought it was funny. But who knows whats in the minds of the AD/C3D programmers for release 2020! :)

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Hyd - whhhhhhhhat?

I just returned from our local AUGI user group meeting. The subject was on Civil 3D 2009 Hydrology. The subject was well presented and received, but it was waaaaaaaay above my head :) Being in a room that is primarily PE's generated the deep-searching questions.

I did glean some stuff from the presentation though which; if it's simple enough for my brain to comprehend, it will be okay to post here - lol

1. Create your Drainage area using the catchment area calc and then turn it into a parcel! Use a separate site name so that it doesn't interfere with your other site stuff. Create a nice looking label using parcels. like DA1 (Name), and Drainage area.

2. When laying out your pipe network, a recommended method is to create a network, place ONE structure on your drawing - it doesn't matter where! Use the good old AutoCAD Copy, move, rotate and (dare I say) mirror to get your structures where you want them. The Structure names will be real funky, but that can be edited later. Then go back and edit that network and add pipes only. Make sure you add them upstream to downstream if you are going to bring into Hydra.

That's it for this post.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Surface editing

A lot of my focus lately has been on surfaces. And of late I've been playing with the various surface editing tools. Before I get into it, there are 2 schools of thought on surfaces:

A. The surface from the surveyor is gospel and shall not be edited in any way, shape or form.
B. The surface has some oddities that are NOT in the field and they need to be fixed.

I tend to lean toward the latter. Editing surfaces is an art. You might be hitting your head against a wall trying to figure out why the surface does this when you swap edges or worse yet, when you can NOT swap an edge. Just like learning a new language, it does not happen overnight. I still struggle with the why's and go to other more knowledgeable people for answers.

What I have found may or may not work for you, but it does work for me:

1. Do NOT delete lines inside your surface! You will create holes! Deleting lines is best for outside or outer perimeter editing.
2. Be CAREFUL when moving points! It might look good in the area that you are editing, but it may cause a snowball effect on the rest of your surface.
3. When deleting points (surface points, NOT survey points) to delete a group of points, press the C key for CROSSING.
4. If you have survey points that are not to be included in your surface, create a group of the points you want to include and then use that group.

I'll have more later - I'm sure.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Catchment Area

One of the nifty tools in 2009 is the catchment area. It is the opposite of the rain drop feature. It saves time especially when trying to figure drainage areas. I use the 2D option, so I can get an area. I haven't played with the 3D option, as I think it would give erroneous areas since it basically drapes itself over the surface and follows every hill and valley.

THEN - I can convert this into a parcel and get a nice area label for my Drainage Area mapping.

Nifty, eh?

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Pasting Surface - order

A quick one to enter - Again, my posts might be very simplistic to some but epiphanies to others.

When you are pasting surfaces, the order in which you paste them is important! For example, if you have the following surfaces; Existing Ground, Finished Grade, Corridor (Road). The order should be Existing FIRST! That way the others will paste ON TOP of the Existing and show/view correctly.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Not ANOTHER Blog!!

Yes there is!

My hope with this blog is to show the Simple Civil 3D capabilities. Of course one person's 'simple' is 'wow that's great!' to another. If I use someone else's information, I will certainly give them full credit due.

I will be posting what I find to be time-savers and the ones that I classifiy as: 'yeah, I already knew that but it is good to be reminded again'.

Just remember that we were all Civil 3D newbies at one time. I hope you enjoy 'Simply Civil 3D'